One Millionth Tower film an interactive meeting place for change

The world premiere cinema of “One Millionth Tower” has just launched in London on Nov. 5, and it's a new popcorn-powered web documentary style that interacts socially with viewers. It includes real-time context and unique ways to interact with the fil

The cinema reimagines a 3D virtual environment of the decrepit high-rise neighborhoods that have cast a universal thread throughout the world, weaving the global fabric of urban life. If it is snowing in real life on Kipling Avenue, it will be snowing on the cinema. Viewers can choose a country of their choosing if interacting within the cinema, or they can simply watch it.

Mozilla’s Popcorn HTML5 media tool-kit harnessed the web in the development of “One Millionth Tower,” by using Javascript “to link real-time social media, news feeds, data visualizations, and other context directly to online video, pulling the web into the action in real time.” (Mozilla Blog, Nov. 5, 2011)

“The One Millionth Tower” is third in the FBS’s Emmy award-winning “Highrise” series. The Mozilla Blog reports that Director Kat Cizek brought together the residents of the dilapidated highrise neighborhoods, architects, designers, animators, web developers, and the Popcorn software through a “multi-layered, 3D landscape that runs directly in the web browser.”

Most high-rise towers are located in the downtown or city center, where older buildings are located. The article in Wired.com states that the cinema faces the same problems that actual residents are facing in global highrise communities: poor access to social services and commerce; deteriorating older buildings; a physical and cultural separation from the downtown core of the city; inadequate public transit and long-distance commutes; no community space or fabric between the high-rise buildings; reliance on long travel times and personal transportation; and no community play space for children.

With the cinema one of the world’s first Popcorn HTML5/webGL documentaries, each of these problems are individually solved in “One Millionth Tower” through a combined effort and imagination, transforming virtual spaces that belongs physically to every community in the sky.